Discussion on: What do you do if you're in the middle of a project and you realize it already exists in the world?

Yes Michael, 👍 Focus.

They can even merge. Easier to use & more fun can be one thing "better UI".

For example, my comment there is suffering from "reddit syndrome". It's a succinct masterpiece of course, but it is also more popular because it is at the top. The UI is determining content. That is influencing people which is distorting things. It's a sweet sweet comment, but there are better ones in the thread which are lower down the page so getting lower engagement. Later ones too that are better. it's not an easy fix & while devto team was making a polls feature...

Someone came along & built dev.three with the promise of machine learning predictive adaptive personalizing AI comment ranking behavior.

That's basically how it happens. If Goo search slips much more, DDG will really get in. If Chrome doesn't pull itself together, Brave gets in.

"It already exists". Kinda.

Edit, Addendum: If you people make that one my top comment again. @peter 😡

dev.four has comment edit timestamps so you don't end up liking things that people can bait & switch. 🤗

Good point!

I usually follow this rules:

• Do I feel like I can do something better in any of those dimensions regarding to the time I plan to allocate to it?
• Am I really close to achieving something that can teach me a lot / would clarify something I never understood / anything in that spectrum

If one of those rules is met, then I'd continue working on it, even if I drop it later.

If others (by contributing/publishing) or me (by learning) have earned anything, it was not vain.